Note:
this is the ninth in a series of occasionally appearing entries focusing on
deserts in general and the drylands of West Texas in particular
Benjamin Henry Grierson developed a deathly
fear of horses when, in 1834, he was an eight year old boy growing up in
Pennsylvania. One had kicked him and he
nearly died from the injury. He
certainly had no intention of spending much time with equines if his decision
to move to Illinois and become a music teacher offers any reliable clues about
his goals in life...
Fate had other plans for Ben Grierson. Well into his thirties when the Civil War
broke out, the Illinois musician volunteered for military service, enlisting to
become the aide-de-camp for Major General Benjamin Prentiss. He found himself reassigned to the 6th Illinois
Cavalry as its regimental commander less than two years later. So much for a fear of horses...
 |
| Colonel Grierson leads his Buffalo Soldiers deep into the Trans-Pecos in search of Victorio and his Apache warriors |
[Civil War historians cite Grierson, who
earned battlefield promotions to a rank of Major General, as one of the most
brilliant cavalry commanders on either side during the Civil War. He played a key role in severing the
communications lines from Vicksburg to the Confederacy's Eastern Theater. Throughout the war, Grierson's seemingly
invincible forces demoralized Southern soldiers and civilians with daring attacks
on railroads and property in their line of march. Choosing to remain on active military service
following Robert E Lee's surrender at Appomattox, he received a post-war rank
of Colonel.]
Much of Grierson's career in the post-Civil
War Army revolved around assignments in the barely populated Southwest. For three years, 1878-1881, he commanded the
vast Military District of the Pecos from his headquarters at Fort Concho in
western Texas. This district stretched
across nearly four hundred miles of desert and desolation, from the small
settlement at present day San Angelo to the outskirts of El Paso. It included both the western Concho Valley
and the Trans-Pecos...
The Military District of the Pecos had three forts-- Concho, Stockton and Davis-- as
well as a number of sub-posts scattered throughout its area of responsibility. The most populous location protected by the forts was the village of
Santa Angela (renamed San Angelo in 1883) in Tom Green County where Camp Hatch
was established in 1867. It being
something of an area tradition to rename settlements and facilities, Camp Hatch
was transformed into Fort Concho a year later...
 |
| Muralist Stylle Read created this map as part of his Military Heritage mural in downtown San Angelo, Texas. The Military District of the Pecos is shown in light red (coloring added by the author). |
In 1880, residents of Tom Green County told the
US Government's census takers that their numbers included 3020 whites, 1132
Mexicans, and 142 blacks. Most lived
near Fort Concho but a few residents resided elsewhere in a county that was still
the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined. (When the state legislature created Tom Green
County in March 1874, it covered over 60,000 square miles. Two years later, legislators redrew its
boundaries to encompass a much smaller area encompassing the present day
counties of Coke, Crane, Ector, Glasscock, Irion, Loving, Midland, Reagan,
Sterling, Tom Green, Upton, and Ward counties.
Tom Green County is today slightly larger than Rhode Island. Its current boundaries came in 1903 following
the creation of Reagan County in the western most part of the Concho Valley)...
Primary mission responsibilities for Fort
Concho soldiers included scouting and mapping West Texas, building roads and
setting up telegraph lines, escorting stage coaches and cattle drives through
hostile Indian territory, surveying potential railroad routes, acting as a
police force for a lawless land known throughout the rest of the country as a
haven for outlaws. One suspects they occasionally
encountered descendants of camels imported into the area in 1856 at the
direction of then United States Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (later the
sole President of the rebellious Confederacy) who thought the "ships of
the desert" would be useful supply animals in the southwestern drylands...
Forts Stockton and Davis were truly in the
midst of that vast desolation which is West Texas...
 |
| Fort Davis as it appeared in the late 19th Century |
Over 160 miles of desert separated Colonel
Grierson from his headquarters along the Concho River and Fort Stockton. Beyond that, it was another 100 miles to Fort
Davis...
Not very many people of European descent
lived in this country where Native Peoples hunted and gathered. Nor were there a tremendous number of these
indigenous folk. Among the earliest of
them were the Jumanos who lived between the Rios Concho and Pecos during the
time of Spanish settlement in the Southwest.
In 1629 and 1632, the missionary Juan de Salas traveled to the area of
present day San Angelo at the request of the Jumanos to instruct them in the
Roman Catholic faith. Nearly two decades
later, Hernán
Martín and Diego del Castillo, came in search of rare freshwater pearls found
in the Concho. A few more explorers
followed-- Diego de Guadalajara in 1654,
Father Nicolás López and Juan Domínguez de Mendoza in 1684-- and all were
impressed by the friendliness of the Jumanos...
By 1750, the Jumanos had essentially
disappeared from the historical record.
Some likely died from new diseases imported to the New World by white
men. Others fell in battle against the
encroaching Apaches who controlled southwestern Texas until they were forced
deeper and deeper into the desert around 1800 by invading Comanches...
 |
| Lipan Apaches, originally a Great Plains people, migrated southward into the area of modern-day Central and West Texas before being displaced by nomadic Comanche warriors. |
Comanche domination over the rugged and empty
country between the Rivers Concho and Pecos faced no real challenge for more
than six decades until the end of America's Civil War triggered an
Anglo-American westward expansion. In
hindsight, the Indians likely knew what would happen after the United States
annexed Texas in 1845 and sent soldiers to build forts, protect settlers, and
eradicate the Native American threat. By
1852, Army men had established Camp J E Johnston in what is now northwestern
Tom Green County and Fort Chadbourne in modern day Coke County. Butterfield Overland Mail Stage line coaches
arrived several years later in 1857, going through today's small settlement of
Carlsbad, crossing the Middle Concho River, and then swinging down to the Horsehead
Crossing of the Pecos...
African-American soldiers, the so-called
Buffalo Soldiers, from Fort Concho took part in three major campaigns of the
Indian Wars fought in the American West and Southwest following the Civil War.
[Among these Buffalo Soldiers was Henry O
Flipper, the first African-American officer to receive a West Point commission
into the Regular Army. Second Lieutenant
Flipper reported to Fort Sill in Oklahoma following his graduation from the
Military Academy in 1877. Like many a
soldier before him, he arrived at his duty station only to learn his orders had
been amended and he was being sent to an infinitely less desirable locale. In Flipper's case, this was Fort Concho in
the West Texas desolation.
 |
| Henry Ossian Flipper, born a slave in Georgia, became the first African-American graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. His career ended with a court-martial on dubious charges likely motivated by racial prejudice. |
Flipper's brief career in the military showed
the Army of the Republic was infested with the same racism that informed the
souls of many who fought for the South in the Army of the Rebellion less than
fifteen years earlier. Many objected to
sharing a meal table with him at the officer's mess. In 1881, some months after he'd been transferred
to the even more remote Fort Davis, Flipper was court-martialed on a charge of
embezzling $2000 while serving as the post's Quartermaster. He was acquitted of the accusation but
convicted of "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman" when
prosecutors added this catch-all charge during
his trial and introduced into evidence letters written by him to a white woman.]
Westward expansion by white settlers, slow in
the pre-Civil War era, picked up rapidly as men disillusioned or displaced by
the conflict looked towards the frontier for a new beginning. Fort Concho troops engaged Native Americans
in Mackenzie's 1872 campaign, the Red River War of 1874, and the Victorio
campaign of 1879 and 1880...
One of the more shameful events in Fort
Concho history was the imprisonment of more than 100 Indian women and children
in a stone corral in 1872 and 1873...
 |
| Although the barren Llano Estacado of the Texas Panhandle fell outside the Military District of the Pecos, soldiers from Fort Concho had the additional responsibility of maintaining order in this dry and empty country. |
This degrading of non-combatants took place
during Ranald Mackenzie's command of Fort Concho. Described by Ulysses S Grant as the
"most promising young officer" in the Union Army during the Civil
War, Mackenzie was a harsh disciplinarian (called the "Perpetual
Punisher" by men serving under him) who did not have the love of his
troops. In late September 1872,
Mackenzie ordered soldiers to attack a Comanche camp that showed no sign of
immediate hostility. Twenty-three Native
men died, unprepared to defend themselves.
Their wives and children, herded to Fort Concho, spent the winter in and
outdoor pen. In the spring, all were
shipped to the Oklahoma Territory to enjoy the Great White Father's hospitality
at a reservation near Fort Sill...
[Mackenzie, incidentally, provoked an
international incident in 1873 when his men rode across the Rio Grande into
Mexico in pursuit of Lipan Apache and Kickapoo raiders.]
Victorio proved to be the last major
challenge of the Indian Wars for Fort Concho and its soldiers. As a young man, he rode with Geronimo and
Mangas Colorado, two of the Apache Nation's greatest warriors. After Mangas Colorado died in 1863, Victorio
slowly assumed leadership of a band of about 300 Chiricahua and Mescalero
Apaches. With no real desire for
continued and ultimately futile bloodshed, Victorio moved his people in 1869 to
a location near Fort Craig, New Mexico, to await completion of the reservation
at Ojo Caliente...
 |
| Victorio |
Apache willingness to submit to changing
times ended in 1877 when the United States government ordered Victorio and his
people moved to Arizona. Protests by the
Indians that their crops weren't ready for harvest were ignored. Despite the hardship imposed, the Apaches
relocated. Conditions at the new
reservation were extremely unpleasant and Victorio decided that enough was
enough. For three years, his band waged
war in the deserts of New Mexico, West Texas, and Mexico...
Hearing reports in August 1880 that Victorio
and his warriors had ridden across the Rio Grande once again and were now
camped in the Guadalupe Mountains of Far West Texas, Colonel Grierson and his
Tenth U S Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers headed west.
Black men from Fort Concho and the red men led by Victorio met in the
Sierra Diablo range and then again at Rattlesnake Springs. Grierson's troops prevailed after a three
hour battle. Victorio's band headed back
to Mexico where they died in a confrontation with Mexican soldiers on October
15, 1880...
Exploring and mapping West Texas were, as
noted previously, a key part of the Fort Concho mission...
 |
| Detail from Stylle Read's Military Heritage mural in downtown San Angelo depicts a Buffalo Soldier patrolling the West Texas desert country west of the city. |
In 1875, William Rufus Shafter (one wonders
if he was named for that wicked son of William the Conqueror so hated by the
Church) and his men hunted for Indians in the barren Llano Estacado of the
western Texas Panhandle. In doing so,
they came to know the area topography and the locations of its scarce water
supplies, details of which were included in Shafter's official report. His account encouraged settlement in the
Panhandle through his descriptions of endless grasslands and countless bison...
Pioneers moving to the area obviously glossed
over Shafter's mention of the extreme trouble he and his men had locating
water. On one occasion, the 450 men
under his command rode for forty hours in hopes of reaching the Pecos River before
thirst and summer heat killed them. This
desperate bid for survival earned Shafter a nickname: Pecos Bill...
An earlier posting in this blog discussed how
the search for relatively quick land routes across the Southwest took on a new
importance in the aftermath of the California Gold Rush. One expedition, tasked with determining the
practicality of an "upper road" from San Antonio to El Paso through
the Concho Valley, traveled the distance between the two cities from June 19,
1849 to July 29, 1849...
 |
| Paisano Pete, the world's largest sculpted roadrunner, greets visitors to contemporary Fort Stockton, Texas. |
Its leader, Lieutenant Francis T Bryan,
reported, in the words of historian J B Burnett writing in his 1970 Trans-Pecos Texas: A Study of Exploration,
"that except for the dry region between the head of the Concho and the
Pecos River, the route offered easy passage for wagons"...
Hardy Anglo-Saxon men and sturdy Anglo-Saxon women
venturing into the western Concho Valley in late 1880 had little to fear from either
Victorio or his men...
 |
| Untold ages ago, a meteor struck the earth in what would become the creosote flats dry country near Fort Stock. The mountains in the background of this photograph are at the rim of the impact area. |
Colonel Grierson and his Buffalo Soldiers had
accomplished their mission well. They, mayhap, encountered an occasional camel--
there were reported sightings of them in the desert country until around
1900. But they surely saw no bison. Even before the herds had been slaughtered to
near extinction, the magnificent animals did not range south of the Twin
Mountains near San Angelo and were total strangers to the Trans-Pecos if State
Geologist S B Buckley reported accurately in his 1876 report to Texas
legislators...
But, as the endless wind whipped across the
hot and dry country, perhaps one or two of these hardy Anglo-Saxon men and
sturdy Anglo-Saxon women saw the proud ghosts or heard the lost voices of the
proud Jumanos and Apaches and Comanches who traveled the vast southwest Texas
despoblados before them...
 |
| Future Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis envisioned a Camel Corps to facilitate exploration of the American Southwest in the days before the Civil War when he was Secretary of War for the United States. |
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CREDITS
Note:
All photographs for this essay were located through Google Images or Wikipedia,
without authoritative source or ownership information except as noted: Fort
Davis from nps.gov; Henry O Flipper from vitia.org, Benjamin Grierson tracking
Victorio, Lipan Apache camp, and Victorio from texasbeyondhistory.net; Sierra
Madera astrobleme near Fort Stockton from geologyabout.com; Camel Packtrain
from thesocietypages.org; Caprock Sunrise from Texas Parks and Wildlife
